Natalie Portman is one crazy bitch. At least when she raps about driving while drunk and fucking all the guys she wants to fuck and doing all sorts of other things you wouldn’t think a demure young lady would do. Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell are too funny. This is video is so ridiculous. You will laugh.

I didn’t feel good growing up back in the day in London with Sri Lankans, ‘cause they’d look down on us. They’d be like, “Oh, you haven’t got a Dad. My Daddy’s a doctor, and we’re going to private school, and then I’m going to Cambridge to be a doctor.” And I knew when I was a kid that was never going to happen to me. I had no parents helping me with my homework. My parents never came to a parents’ meeting in school, I went to my own—“How’m I doing this year?” [laughs] Then when I started doing art, and everyone was like, “Oh my God, your children are so thick that they have to take art!”

Reading Dinu’s site I found a very interesting interview with an Iraqi suicide bomber: Inside the Mind of an Iraqi Suicide Bomber. I’m always amazed at the things people can do and rationalize in the name of religion. It is scary, though not surprising, that the suicide bomber had to wait almost half a year to get on the list of suicide bomber volunteers; the article isn’t completely clear why, though the implication seems to be because the list is so long. It should also come as no surprise that the occupation, as well as the influx of Mujahedeen from neighboring countries, is also helping to fill the ranks of the insurgency. Rumsfeld has said he expects the insurgency to go on for years. I think ultimately Iraq will go the way of Viet Nam; it will be a horrible debacle for the US, which will leave Iraq scarred for years to come.

‘Open-source codes’ are protected by copyright, and with the way things are starting to go in this country, if forced to choose between being caught with a van full of pirated DVDs or heroin you’d actually have to pause and think about it.

(Actually, the discourse is more intelligent than I would have you believe. Jason discusses the recent hype around Internet technology, while Mena discusses a few things, the most interesting being the fact that people are a bit too self-obsessed in the blogosphere, and the nature of her company SixApart.)

I read on metafilter today that someone has made a documentary about Japan’s very notorious photographer, Nobuyoshi Araki. I’ve always thought of Araki as an avant-garde pornographer, but people do consider him to be an excellent photographer. There is definitely a distinct style to his photos. I think the way he lights shots and poses his women is interesting. One thing is for certain, the man does have a real fondness for the pussy; no doubt about that.

Update: I received an email from a fellow involved with this film earlier today:

I was searching around and found that you had posted about Arakimentari, the documentary on Nobuyoshi Araki. I’m working on the film, and wanted to let you know that it’s New York release will be January 21st-February 4th at the Imaginasian Theater.

Apparently it has taken quite some time for the movie to finally make it out to the cinemas. I originally posted this link February 17th 2004. That’s almost a year ago. The movie business is apparently more complicated then I thought. I’m hoping they’ll show the movie up here in Canada. It looks quite interesting.

This article, In Praise of Attrition was in the December issue of Harper’s—well sort of anyway. Basically, Harpers just took sentances here and there from the essay and stuck them together to make a shorter essay. I wonder if they do this all the time in their ‘Readings’ section?

There is no indication that the essay they present in the magazine isn’t the essay I linked to here. Harper’s mentions in the magazine that their essay is ”... from In Praise of Attrition, by Ralph Peters…” as opposed to actually being In Praise of Attrition. Haper’s took bits and pieces throughout the essay to make a new one—that doesn’t sit right with me. I would think that if you are quoting from another work, which is really what Harper’s has done here, you would select some contiguous block of text as your shorter ‘essay’. There are no ’...’ to mark where text is missing; we are simply shown what looks to be a short essay on war. The essay Harper’s presents is the equivalent of a Hard Copy or Daily Show interview.

Mind you, both articles are fucked up. To sum up the essays, the military stratergy the US needs to adopt is: killing as many people in as violent a fashion as they can.

This essay does not suppose that warfare is simple: “Just go out and kill ’em.”

Trust me, it does. This essay is all about how killing is the only effective means in which to win a war. I suppose that should really be thought of as some sort of axiom of war.

Consider our enemies in the War on Terror. Men who believe, literally, that they are on a mission from God to destroy your civilization and who regard death as a promotion are not impressed by elegant maneuvers. You must find them, no matter how long it takes, then kill them. If they surrender, you must accord them their rights under the laws of war and international conventions. But, as we have learned so painfully from all the mindless, left-wing nonsense spouted about the prisoners at Guantanamo, you are much better off killing them before they have a chance to surrender.

My Yashica finally arrived today. Shopping on eBay, while quite cost effective, lacks the instant satisfaction one gets from going to the mall. Camera shops in Toronto seem to sell cameras for much more then eBay, so I am willing to put up with less them prompt service. The camera looks great; I wasn’t sure what to expect. I still need to track down some sort of battery for the beast so I can give it a run. Most everyone is quite favourable in their reviews of this camera: Matt’s Cameras, Photoethnography, Yashica Guy, Alfred’s Camera Page, Nikonian Discussion.

Remember in Mac OS 9 when you drag a window to the bottom of the screen and it became a tab. That was awesome. Actaully, Apple managed to drop a lot of good things when they moved from OS 9 to OS X. Now, OS X is also awesome to the max, but I mean, how hard would it have been to keep the Application menu? Thankfully, people are hard at work trying to bring back 1999.

Eric Meyer, of CSS fame, has posted his opinions on the election: Behind the Beauty, Cracks Appear. The article focuses primarily on the Gay marriage issue. I think this should be called Behind the Cracks, Cracks Appear. I think many Americans are in love with a country that only exists in their heads. Of course, I’m horribly anti-American, so you can take that with a grain of salt. But in all honesty, I don’t understand what people are clinging to. At some point you need to look around and ask yourself, “This is my home?”

Here are what other people are saying; you know, people who live in America:

Not A Dollar Short Shows off a new Canada. I think I’d like this new Canada since I could finally visit New York. Seriously, why don’t some states just leave the US. Like California? It could go it alone.

Jane Smiley expalins why the democrats should be in no rush to covet the Republican voting base.

I originally posted these links at the bottom of my post on the election, but I think they deserve there own entry. I don’t read too many (any) web sites where people are happy about the re-election of George Bush it would appear.

I got sent this link to an animation on America’s position in the world, titled What Barry Says. It’s definitely worth checking out since it’s really well done. The video looks like the opening to a video game. I should say up front, it’s left-leaning-liberal-homo-communist-anti-america-terrorist-loving-freedom-hating propaganda; you can’t win ‘em all.

I got an email from someone that reads my site, telling me to check out the new Eminem video. I was aware his new video was anti-Bush, but didn’t bother to check it out. I finally got around to downloading it today. The video is an animation, and features Eminem and a assortment of people who get screwed by Bush marching to sign up to vote. Are they playing this song on MTV yet, or on the radio? The message is quite clear. November 2nd is only a few days away. To the Americans who read my site, I certainly hope you go out and vote—for Kerry, just so there is no confusion. If you want to vote for Bush, it’s your choice, but it’s probably a foolish one to make. As I see it, unless you are a Christian heterosexual rich white male, there is no good reason to vote for Bush.

I’ve been using Audioscrobbler to share my music listening habits with the internet. The problem with Audioscrobbler is that the music I listen to on my iPod is ignored; that is no good. Musicmobs is another service designed to share your music listening habits with the world. The difference between Audioscrobbler and Musicmobs is that while Audioscrobbler uses a plugin to poll iTunes and determine what you are listening to, Musicmobs requires you simply upload your iTunes library file. Once Musicmobs has your library XML file it does some heavy lifting and generates a page that describes what you have been listening to.

I’m not sure how they determine what qualifies as being in heavy rotation, but I don’t know if I like it. Listening to Toxic over and over again has managed to make me some sort of Britney Spears fan. Oh dear God no.

First impressions suggest Audioscrobbler is a better service. Audioscrobbler keeps track of more information, lets you download the data it collects, has a cleaner web interface, and may have a bigger user base. I like the fact that Musicmobs lets you process your iTunes library file. I would like something similar to this for Audioscrobbler.

For the past few days I’ve been watching the Democratic National Convention whenever I have some free time. I was pretty impressed with all the speeches I heard during the convention. I suppose, liberal that I am, that isn’t much of an accomplishment.

I just watched Kerry’s speech tonight and thought it was great. I haven’t really heard him speak much, and since he is usually called a robot in the media, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I think he did a good job at presenting himself to America. Kerry was on Bush’s ass pretty hard in the speech, basically summing up what Micheal Moore expounds on in great detail in Fahrenheit 9/11. However, I would say all the not-so-subtle jabs at the current administration were done with tact. Well, except when he called out the Saudi royal family. I wish they had people behind Kerry giving gun shots at that point.

I find when I hear Kerry speak I want to believe everything he says. The cynic in me vanishes. I agree with all the positions he brought up in his speech. I get sucked in when he talks about taxing the rich and helping out the middle class, when he goes on about improving social security and health care, when he goes on about not trying to be the biggest ass-hole country on the planet. And I’m not even a damn American. I really want him to win in November. I can’t stress how much. Another 4 years of Bush would make me crazy. I don’t know how you people living in the US can wake up in the morning.

Now, Kerry’s speech was good, but I thought Al Sharpton’s was the best I heard. There is a passion to Sharpton that I find impressive. I think it may have something to do with him being a reverend. Apparently the speech he delivered was quite different then the one he said he would, running much longer then it should have. I missed Barack Obama’s speech, which I was told he delivered brilliantly. If you like speeches as much as I do, I recommend you check out American Rhetoric. The site features some of the best American speeches in history.